I came across an article a little while ago by a woman who is a “super-recognizer.”
This was a new term for me, but she explained: she is among a small percentage of people who remembers the face of everyone she has ever seen. She is one of a group of folks who can recall with perfect accuracy every single person they have met. They literally never forget a face.
The author explains that this has nothing to do with intellect or even memory; she has plenty of trouble remembering simple things like grocery lists. She calls herself a “one-hit wonder.” But she claims that as a result of this remarkable ability of hers, she cannot ever consider anyone as less than a unique, unrepeatable individual who is distinct from every other in the world.
“I truly don’t mean to sound like a Coca Cola commercial here …but this is how my brain, and thus my body and spirit, relate to others. To me, there is no such thing as a ‘faceless horde.’ ”
This writer said she can even recognize someone based entirely on their baby photo. So hypothetically, if she were to see a photo of you as a baby, and then turn around to face a crowd of people in which you are standing, she could pick you out correctly 100% of the time. And that’s regardless of whether you are in your teens, forties or eighties.
Isn’t that amazing?
According to professional testing she has undergone, it is attributed to her brain’s ability to discern unique traits in each face. She discerns differences in faces, immediately, and then her memory retains them.
Just think what the world would be like if we all had that “super-power”!
Even better, what if on a spiritual level we were given the greater gift of immediately recognizing the inestimable value and uniqueness of each individual person?
Cardinal Tobin of Newark, N.J. suggests this as a kind of ‘recipe’ to overcome the problem of the “facelessness” of those in our communities who are most neglected–the poor and the forgotten. He says: do simple acts of compassion to communicate the Gospel of Jesus. Walk with the sick, spend time with the lonely, visit the imprisoned. It is advice that is solidly rooted in the Gospel.
At Karidat, we can attest that one of the wonderful payoffs to this method is that you gain friends, and one at a time, people who once seemed strange and different to you start to seem a whole lot more familiar.
Maybe it doesn’t happen immediately, as it does for the ‘super-recognizer’ mentioned in the article. But I would like to think that, over time and with some stretching and “training” of the heart and the mind, it could, as we come closer and closer to the heart of Jesus for whom we are each unique and unrepeatably beautiful.